The proliferation of broadband services allows for a greater number of people to enjoy computer or video games, which exist in several genres. For example in some computer games, players conquer territories for ever-increasing rewards. In many role-playing games (RPG) or first-person shooter (FPS) games, players develop unique characters and, by controlling the actions of the characters they create during gameplay, the players (via their characters) accumulate various objects and abilities through extended play. The rules for how quickly, how many, and what type of abilities and objects a character may earn or gain usually involves several ratings or statistics. These ratings determine the outcome of various chance or future events that lead to new objects and abilities.
In many games, a player may compete against another player either in person or via an online game. Many online games offer leaderboards which allow a player to judge how a particular game play session compares against other game players. Most leaderboards measure a level achieved and certain standard statistics, such as the amount of time played to achieve the level. Simple performance metrics are often used to display basic statistics on performance. Examples of such metrics include the number of kills, kill/death ratio, scores, achievements, timings, and levels passed. This data is transmitted by the game client, running on the player's home console or personal computer (PC), to the leaderboards service hosted at the back end of the gaming system.
The ability to evaluate their performance, at varying degrees of detail, in real-time is important for video game players, especially when playing competitive online multiplayer games. Further, many players are driven by and also desire to compete at all levels of game play. For example, a player may desire to not only be the player with the highest score but also to be the best/highest-ranked player with a particular game weapon or accessory or a combination thereof. Further, a player may desire to achieve highest levels or rankings in not only one game but also of other games in the same genre or to be able to play at a level achieved in one game in another game of the same genre.
From a player's perspective, certain games may have an endpoint or hit a plateau where the player's enjoyment stagnates because the player has achieved the biggest challenge possible or has used all of the assets available to him or her in achieving an objective. Users may then want to try other games in the same genre, but they also have a tendency to be discouraged if they do not win or acquire any assets in a few consecutive games, if they are not able to play at a level they are accustomed to, if they perceive a game level to be too complex, or if the game rewards are not forthcoming.
Further, several players of a video game are not always engaged with the video game. Some players may play the game intermittently. Other players may visit the game website or use the game app only in rare instances. Especially in the smart device market segment, users are very time sensitive and tend to skip or switch to another game, application, channel or device webpage, whenever they do not feel engaged with a game.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system that allows for video games to be designed such that they maximize player engagement and retention and also improves the experience of playing and performing in video games for players.
There is also a need to enable a player's game statistics, specific to a particular game, to be reformatted and processed in a manner that would allow those statistics to be compared to the game statistics of other players from other games that share the same genre. For example, similar statistics are used to measure the performance of players in a given genre, e.g. first person shooter games use number of kills, kill/death ratio, scores, achievements, timings, and levels passed. To create greater player liquidity between games, it would be preferable to rank players in a manner that transcends a single game and, preferably, across all games in a given genre, thereby enabling a player to determine how he or she is ranked not just for Game X but for across all games, including Game X, in that given genre. There is therefore a need for aggregating, normalizing and publishing a user's cross-game performance data indicative of the user's overall unified ranking or skill level across different games from the same genre to identify other players with similar skill levels for a match and enable the user to start a new game at a level commensurate with the user's overall ranking or skill level.
There is also need to enable the cross-game trading of virtual items. To create greater player liquidity between games, it would be preferable to have a system that can allow players to trade virtual items between distinct and separate games. Therefore, there is a need for systems and methods that normalize and publish trading values for a plurality of virtual items acquired by the user, thereby enabling trading of the virtual items amongst players across different games.